Getting Started with 3-D Printing: the Hardware

I've been interested in 3-D printers ever since I saw one at a Maker Faire a
few years ago, but it was only a year ago when I started seriously thinking
about having one of my own. At that point, I started to realize just how
many different options existed and ultimately started
researching the RepRap family of 3-D printers (more on the different printer
families below). After about a year of research, I finally settled on a
printer that fit my needs and my budget.

During my research, I found that 3-D printing was an even more vast world than
I imagined before. Not only are there lots of choices with the hardware,
even when it comes to the software, you have a lot of options. In this
article, I
give a general overview of 3-D printing hardware, and then in my next
article,
I will discuss some of the current most popular software to control your
printer. So if you have thought about getting into 3-D printing and were
wondering how it works with Linux, these columns should give you a good
overview from the perspective of someone who's relatively new to 3-D
printing himself.

What Is 3-D Printing?

When most geeks talk about 3-D printing, they are talking about some method
to create three-dimensional objects much like a regular printer. Although most
hobbyist 3-D printers work with plastic, there also are efforts to print in
all sorts of other materials from metals to ceramics to organic materials.
Even if you narrow things down to talking only about 3-D printing in plastic,
there still are all sorts of methods 3-D printers can use. That said,
basically all of the home 3-D printers operate via plastic extrusion. If you
have used a hot-glue gun before, you know that you load the back of the gun
with a large glue stick, and once the tip of the gun heats up, your trigger
forces the glue stick toward the hot end of the gun where it extrudes in a
much narrower blob of glue. Imagine taking a three-dimensional object and
slicing it into layers as thick as the hot glue from your hot-glue gun, and
then imagine carefully squeezing the hot glue out onto a surface layer by
layer until you got your object.

Plastic extrusion works in a similar way to a hot-glue gun except your
plastic comes in the form of a long filament of ABS or PLA plastic 1.75mm or
3mm in diameter. The 3-D printer's extruder forces the filament into the hot
end of the printer, which heats up enough to melt the plastic
(160–190°C
is average for PLA, and 200–250°C for ABS). The melted plastic is then pushed
through a much narrower nozzle (.5mm to .35mm normally) onto a print bed.

If all a 3-D printer did was melt plastic like a hot-glue gun, it would be
great for creating blobs of melted plastic but not much else. What makes
the 3-D printer useful is that this extruder is mounted on a stable frame
with precise X, Y and Z axis motors controlled by custom electronics. When
you send a 3-D diagram to the printer, it is sliced into individual layers,
and each layer is represented by a series of X, Y and Z movements, along
with instructions to extrude or retract the plastic filament at appropriate
points. The result is that your object is printed layer on top of layer.

Types of 3-D Printers

If you are new to 3-D printing, the number of options available can be
overwhelming at first. Not only do many of the printers look relatively
different from each other, there also is a wide range of prices for 3-D
printer kits, from around $500 to more than $2,000 (which is much better than
$15,000+ for commercial models). Plus, if you are resourceful, you even
can bypass the kits and source all your own parts—it's more effort on your
part, and there's a greater chance something might not work, but you can
cut down the cost rather dramatically in some cases.

What I've found in my research is that 3-D printers are a lot like Linux
distributions. If you were to ask everyone who had 3-D printers which one to
get, you'd get about as many replies as if you asked all the Linux users
what distribution to use. Some 3-D printers appeal to newbies, and others
appeal to experienced users. Some 3-D printers focus on how open their
hardware and software is, and others take a more commercial approach.
Sound familiar?

I'm not going to enumerate every single 3-D printer out there, so I'm sorry
if I leave out your favorite one, but I've found when you look at what 3-D
printers the majority of people use, they tend to fall in two big
categories: laser-cut wooden-box 3-D printers and RepRap-based printers.
Like with Linux distributions, the 3-D printers I'm discussing generally
follow open-source principles not just in their software but also in their
hardware. Also note that although in some cases you can spend extra to get a
pre-assembled kit, most of the kits I mention come unassembled and will
require many hours to assemble and calibrate.

Laser-Cut Wooden-Box 3-D Printers

The first category of printer is most identifiable by the fact that the
whole printer is enclosed in a wooden box that's usually created by a laser
cutter. Printers that fit this category include the MakerBot family of
printers, the Ultimaker and the Mosaic printer from MakerGear. Although all
of these printers are different, they generally appeal more to people who
are new to 3-D printing and want a more-polished appearance to their
printer. This more polished appearance means more parts, and unlike the
RepRap family of printers, most people who go this route buy a kit with a
complete set of parts, and as a result, the price can be higher, starting at
$900 for an unassembled Mosaic kit to $2,000 for an all-bells-and-whistles
dual-extruder MakerBot Replicator. If you have the money, you can get a
nice-looking 3-D printer in this category that functions well, but just
don't assume that the extra money necessarily buys you better specs. Think
of it like buying a commercial Linux distribution versus downloading a
community-supported one.

Kyle Rankin is a director of engineering operations in the San Francisco Bay Area, the author of a number of books including DevOps Troubleshooting and The Official Ubuntu Server Book, and is a columnist for Linux Journal.

Comments

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Kyle, what a fantastic job covering all aspects of 3-D printing, I'm impressed. The $500 model seems feasible, but for goofing around with fun in mind this is not an expense I care to dish out so easily. Still, to print your own 3-D objects for that sort of money is not a bad deal at all.

What's in a name: it's called 3D printing, maybe because it is somewhat similar to 2D printing in that way that it kind of 'exports' a digital representation into (3D), or on to (2D) a real-world object. Language is not as theoretically consistant as i.e. math, it's a convention of words...

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